Grab a cup of joe…have some breakfast, but please join us for “launch”…:)

In conjunction with Joseph Wraith (my incredibly talented brother) of www.wraithlight.com, we have recently cleared the starting gate to raise funds for Producing GIDEON the MOVIE!

For even the price of a movie ticket anyone can donate and help make this dream a reality….We are extremely excited to see how GOD moves on this project and pray a special blessing on all those who do…

We have recently added the www.thegideonnovel.com webpage to our site and posted an excerpt from the book. Feel free to visit and read it.

And if you all will, please Share the project and our web page www.thegideonmovie.com with others. This is going to happen and we would love for as many as will to be a part of it.

The trend these days in the world of film is to make movies based on books. A Producer told me one of the criteria Distributors are looking for is, “Is it based on a book?” Another is, “Is it a true story?” There are others but these two appear to be the most influential if a studio is going to make a movie or if a Distributor is going to distribute a film.

Another trend that is gaining ground is a writer taking his Script and sort of reverse engineering it into a novel.

While writing my screenplay GIDEON I have often thought of turning it into a book. However, time passed and I got involved in writing other scripts and other projects, and never got the bug to do so. My Manager, Alan Yott, throughout the years continued to tweak my ear, encouraging me to turn Gideon into a novel. And thank GOD he did.

Recently, I think I finally got bit by the book bug because much to Alan’s delight I have started the creative process of turning the Gideon Screenplay into Gideon the Book. Writing a novel is a completely different animal than writing a script. So much so, that they don’t even sell a software that will help you take your script and turn it into a novel. When I asked some writing distributors why that is, he said “Those two writing styles are not compatible.”

(Note to self….find someone who can write software that can turn a script to a novel and make a ton of money.)

I must say it is arduous, and an exhausting process, even though the story has been written and is laid out before me like a yellow brick road. I am finding however, that it is opening the story up in a way I had never imagined. The fact that I can write down the thoughts, memories, and motives of the people in the story whom I feel like I know so well has taken this exercise to another level for me. And has really gotten my writing and humor juices flowing.

I am currently in the First Draft Stage of the book, but I would like to share a short excerpt from it as a sample of how it may indeed read. This scene is taken from Chapter 3 entitled “Pushin’ Buttons” and takes place in the Back Wash Motel where Gideon is eventually discovered. The owners of the motel are introduced in this excerpt.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I have writing it. Hopefully the fun I am having translates to you the reader.

Here it is…GIDEON the BOOK excerpt….Chapter 3

Inside the closet, smoking a cigar is Ed Hanson.He is a flush faced, gruff looking man in his sixties.If his personality were sandpaper it would be forty-grit.

His cigar stub hangs off his lip like an accessory.A stained white tank top compliments his ensemble.Ed scrounges through the hodgepodge of items stuffed to the ceiling, and crammed onto the shelves.

Smoke in the room practically chokes out the light from a single bulb hanging from a wire strand.The man breathes in the smoke as easily as a fish breathes in water.

Ed owns the motel with his wife, Martha.

“Jenny!” Ed calls out again.“Swear sometimes that woman…”Ed goes into a coughing fit and stumbles out of the closet.He takes out a handkerchief, and hacks into it.There’s a bit of blood in his spit.

Ed recovers, then turns and kicks stuff back into the closet.As he tries to shut the door, junk just keeps tumbling out.

“Why you calling Jenny?”An irritated voice from behind Ed interrupts his early morning exercise in futility.

“The mop.”Ed grumbles.“Gotta clean seven.Mud everywhere.”Ed stops to take a draw on his cigar.“Knew them folks were pigs with all them kids.”

Martha goes past Ed to get to her work behind the “Welcome Desk”.

“Jenny don’t come in ‘til seven-thirty on Fridays,” Martha informs him as she begins sorting through the receipts.Then she adds, “Those pigs with kids were in two.Left spotless.Sweet woman even offered to wash the towels and sheets.”

Ed has gone over to the coffee pot to pour himself a cup of Martha’s finest.“Hmmph” Ed growls, not buying it.

Now no one knew Ed better than Martha.And no one knew Martha better than Ed.After all, they’d been married longer than Lipton made tea.And no day was complete without a bit of verbal pecking between these forever lovebirds.

“Probably left the mop in eight where you was fixin’ the sink.”Then Martha, well practiced in the art of pushing Ed’s buttons, fires her next question with all the deft of a professional attorney fully knowing she is stoking an already roaring fire.

Before Ed can even take a sip of his caffeine juice, Martha puts on her best innocent expression like powdering her face to go to church.

“Get the sink fixed?” Martha asks sweetly.

To tell the truth, Ed is a good handy man, and you have to be, especially when you own a motel out in the middle of nowhere.Getting a service guy of any kind out here is a chore in itself.So Ed has done an admirable job of keeping the place intact with duct tape and number 10D size nails.

But a leaking pipe can challenge the best of handy men, and Ed has been wrestling with this particular pipe for weeks.Seems like every time he’s got the leak plugged it springs up somewhere else.So when Martha dares to ask did he ‘get it fixed?’Well, Ed could have boiled that coffee in the pot without a stove.

Ed slams the cup down, throws on a hat, and opens the front door.A little bell attached to the top of the door frame rings when the door hits it.

There are things happening in the realm behind the physical veil that we can’t even imagine. All we can do is seek GOD’s guidance, pray, and trust HIM and HIS perfect timing.

A little while back I was excited to have the opportunity to write a movie for Hallmark. The challenge was, it was going to be from a book and had to be done in 1 week. Although in the natural this was almost impossible, for me, with the eye of faith, I believed if GOD was opening that door HE was also going to see me to complete the task.

As it turned out the Hallmark people didn’t get the book rights and the producer called me to tell me “false alarm”. This was after they had sent me the book and I already started reading and taking notes.

Although it would have been a wonderful opportunity I saw it as a chance to prove my heart was willing, even to a task so ridiculous as what they were asking for.

But GOD knew something I didn’t.

So rather than be disappointed, I looked at it as a “seed” planted for a better opportunity and I praised GOD for what HE was going to do next.

Fast forward several months later and that better opportunity arrived from an unexpected location. Again, it was to write a script from a book. This time however, an actor was already attached. In fact, it was the actor who was trying to get the book made into a film.

I had a customer that called me to help move his TV’s to his new home. I’ve worked with this customer for several years, but all he knew of me was that I was a satellite/cable/audio guy. He had no idea I liked to write movies.

So I go over to his house one Saturday to survey what he needs done, and we get into a conversation about how he has been working for the last several months helping this actor get a movie made from a book.(I will not reveal the book, the actor, or the movie until it is in production). I asked him, “do you have a script?” He says, “No. Just the book rights.”

I said, “You can’t make a movie without a script. You can’t film a movie using a book.”

He laughed and said, “Yeah, we haven’t been able to get to far yet.”

Well something in my spirit leapt and I heard a voice say, “Tell him you will write the script as a spec.” A spec or speculative screenplay, is a screenplay written for free with the “hopes” of selling it.

So I blurted out, “I’ll write the script, as a spec screenplay. Pay me if you decide you want to use it.”

He said, “I didn’t know you write movies.” I quickly went out to my truck, and brought in my laptop, took him to this website and showed him the Kairos Prize Competition I’d just recently won. He was surprised and excited.

“You never know who you’re dealing with” he said.

“You are now dealing with the guy who’s going to write your movie.” I replied.

He immediately called the actor and they arranged to send me the book.

My challenge was to write the script as quickly as possible because the actor was going to have to re-up his book rights soon. My other challenge was to write the script around working full time….My goal……Write 3 pages a day, or at least spend 3 hours a day researching for the script. I motivated myself by taking coffee away from me, (of which I drank 3 to 4 cups a day), until I had some semblance of a finished script.

Another motivator was my good friend and bro in Christ, and my Manager, Alan Yott(who at first was not sure it was GOD who told me to write it for free) LOL! But in time will be able to look back and see it could have only been HIM. Alan has been a great motivator and prayer warrior/partner for me as I put my pen to the grindstone to flesh out the script. (Thanks Alan!)

This was/is becoming way more than I could have imagined and dreamed. I definitely saw and still see GOD’s hand on it all. And I believe it all started from that “seed” I planted for the Hallmark movie I never got to do.

2 months after having received the book, my customer(producer) and the actor had the finished 1st draft in their hands. I “wrote forward” basically 3 pages a day until I completed a 152 page script. (approximately 2 and a half hours)

Their reaction?…….They love it!!! PRAISE the LORD!!!!

I could live a thousand lifetimes and never have the opportunity this blessing has been and is going to be for me….I just praise JESUS HE opened the door for me in this life time.

Stay tuned for the incredible story and ongoing updates….

Meanwhile, I think I’ll have a cup of joe, put my feets up, and enjoy the downtime….

I just got a call from a Producer on Sunday who wants me to write a 100 page script for the Hallmark channel by next week Friday. It will be based on a 300 page book he is shipping to me by this Wednesday.

“I can do all things thru Christ who strengthens me.”

I sent that text out to my brother Sunday morning to encourage him in an endeavor he is trying to accomplish this week….I went to lunch and looked up and lo and behold it was on the back of a pink t-shirt a girl was wearing….”I can do all things thru Christ who Strengthens me.”

I thought it was a confirmation of what I sent my brother. Little did I realize GOD also meant it for me. That evening I got the call from the Producer. He called it a Herculean task. The first thing that came up in my spirit was this is a David VS Goliath mission….BUT….”I can do ALL things thru CHRIST who strengthens me.”

The next two weeks are going to be fun….Can’t wait to see what the LORD does thru me on this one…..HA! I love it!!!

This is the verse the LORD gave me to speak over GIDEON. I have been speaking it for many years now….

“And the LORD answered me and said, ‘Write the Vision, make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.

For the Vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie: Though it tarry, wait for it. For it shall surely come, it will not tarry.”

I truly believe I am at the “he may run that readeth it” point of this journey…and the “appointed time” when GIDEON is on the BIG SCREEN is coming quickly….”For it shall surely come…..IT will NOTtarry”……

These next couple of weeks are going to be extremely invigorating and exciting to see what the LORD is going to do……